Playster, an alternative to Kindle Unlimited?

 

www.playster.com

A new multimedia site came to my attention recently called Playster.  It has media content such as books, music, games and movies.  For this review I’ll concentrate on the books since this is a book site.  As far as book content goes it’s pretty good.  Playster scored a major publisher in Harper Collins. For the romance novel lovers this means Avon Books!  I saw some very familiar names in Janet Evanovich, Rachel Gibson, Johnna Lindsey, Kim Harrison, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Lori Wilde, Pamela Palmer, Nicole Williams, Kelley Armstrong, Amy Plum, and L.J. Smith.  

For some non-romance titles I saw “The American Sniper”, Charles Bukowski, Michel Crichton, James Rollins, Pittacus Lore, a ton of cool non-fiction/biographies, and some “dummies” books. I have my eye on “Knitting for Dummies”.

What originally caught my eye was Kim Harrison’s The Hallows series. I’ve wanted to read this series but at 10 books deep that’s quite the investment if I like the series.  This one series could potentially cost me close to $80.00 using $7.99 as the ticket price per book.  If you are anything like me I can read fast and whip through a series in a couple of weeks if I love it enough.  

So let’s talk Playster numbers. You get a 30 day free trail, if you don’t cancel within the 30 days you will automatically be upgraded to a member of the site for $15.99 per month.  If you forget to cancel within the 30 days you are charged the $15.99 non-refundable but you can still cancel and enjoy the remaining days of the month you paid for, which I think is reasonable enough. I mean come on we all know when you sign up for a “free trail” you are actually signing yourself up for a membership and it’s your own fault for not reading the terms and conditions when you put in all of your details including your credit card number.  You can cancel a number of ways including calling, emailing and there is even a chat option.

So how does this compare to Kindle Unlimited? One, you don’t have to have a Kindle to use Playster. It is compatible with any smart device such as a smart phone, computer or tablet. They have an app you can download. I admit have not actually used the app, the reading I did was on my computer while I was working (ssshhhh don’t tell anyone!) I chatted in with Playster asking if it was compatible with my Kindle Paperwhite and they said you can use the experimental browser to read on your device but it will load somewhat slowly and the reading experience would be better through the app.  Two, which the price of Playster is higher at $15.99 vs $9.99 I found that the books on Playster are better. I’ve found that Kindle Unlimited has a lot of self-published or Indy authors which is great, I like those books too, but I can buy them at $1-$2 a pop at my leisure.  The bigger names that you see on Playster go more for $5-$10 a pop so you only have to read 1-3 books a month on Playster to cover what you spent for the monthly subscription.  I say give it a whirl; don’t see any books you like, cancel it before the 30 days and harm no foul.

Since Playster does have other content I feel I’d be remiss if I don’t at least mention it. The music is a lot of Indy musicians. If you love to experiment and find new music I think you’ll love Playsters music content.  The movies, unless you love movies based on musicans I didn’t really see anything worth mentioning. Games, I don’t really play any games but I found a review from a gamer and he assured us that the game content is quite good.  http://gamepadreviews.com/playster-review/  if you would like to see the review.  What I would like to mention about Playster and it’s content this is a brand new site, it is still in Beta so I figure that the content will only get better with time.

Will Playster in time replace your Netflix and Spotify, I don’t know but I think it has the potential if they do it right.